"Basic Instinct"
(1992)
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Director of Photography: Jan de Bont
Writer: Joe Eszterhas
Early '90s erotic trash from the mind of Joe Eszterhas that is better than it deserves to be thanks largely to Verhoeven and his cinematographer. What could have been a straight-to-video z-grade T&A flick if it was saddled with a lower budget with lower-wattage star power (I'm talking to you Shannon Tweed, Joan Severance, and Andrew Stevens), instead is a well-produced, Hitchcockian guilty pleasure. A perfect mix of an early Danish Verhoeven thriller, albeit with a large budget, and one of the aforementioned direct-to-video sexploitation numbers. Looking at it now, it is a bold exercise testing Western boundaries compared to the conformist, puritanical modernism we find ourselves in. An unintentional comedy that is exceptionally made. In the words of Verhoeven, "A great movie, but a nonsense movie". Bought at Videomatica.
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